Zara Tisma turns to greenhouses and gardens for her latest series of ink on paper artworks

Her drawings are inspired by the environments and objects found in public gardens and greenhouses, as these are the places she often visits when she is looking for a moment of stillness away from her urban lifestyle.

Like with much of her work, organic form and balance sit at the heart of Tisma's practice. She begins with what she likes to call a "seed of inspiration" – a memory, a person, a place, or a feeling. She then starts small from a single line, mark or dot, adding mark making and considered structural lines that are referenced from photographs and long-term memories.

Inspired by self-development, Tisma explores the ideology behind the Gaia Theory, researched and founded by scientist, environmentalist, and futurist James Lovelock. Lovelock believed that living organisms build a relationship with their "inorganic surroundings to form an organic, synergistic, and self-regulating system to help maintain the earth's cycle". In short, he believed that our existence would always push the natural world to go through essential cycles such as climate change and evolution.

As such, Tisma describes her work as a visual metaphor of Lovelocks' theory – as though her work will journey through natural cycles of change because of new environments, people, and lifestyles but like the Gaia Theory, it will always continue to come back to its fundamental core to seek harmony through balance.

You could say 'Wilt, Fall, Root, Grow' are Tisman's own personal accounts of development, growth, and change, all on paper for everyone to see. Discover more of Zara Tisma's work at www.zaratisma.com or follow her on Instagram.